Now for a less sexy blog topic (that I wrote and should have posted 2 months ago): immigration into a country. Myanmar was a dream vacation to us, especially after hearing such strong recommendations from friends like Carlos “Valley of the Hidden Temples” Gomez and Matt “Motor Bike Around ” Zedler. There was one potentially significant “barrier to entry” to making this dream a reality though (pardon the pun): Obtaining a Visa. We organized the trip ~6 weeks in advance (not recommended) and didn’t have time to obtain…

I’m SUPER optimistic about open data and civic tech in China. For the last five years I worked for the City of Houston. Among the projects I worked on, I was part of the city/community team that launched Houston’s open data and open innovation hackathon initiatives. I worked with really awesome people and had transformative leaders in Mayor Annise Parker, Council Member Ed Gonzalez, and CFO Kelly Dowe. Not everything worked out well, but we were able to ask why we did things, to experiment, and to empower people to make a difference. These programs allowed us to extend the ability to…